Terra Australis: Map

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Terra Australis (Latin, "land
of the south") was a hypothetical continent appearing on European maps from the 15th
to the 18th centuries. Other names for the continent include
Terra Australis Incognita (the unknown land of the
South), Magallanica or Magellanica (the
land of Magellan), La
Australia del Espiritu Santo (the southern land of the
Holy Spirit), and La grande isle de Java (the
great island of Java).

Origins

Terre Australle, 1583.

The notion of Terra Australis was introduced by Aristotle. His ideas were later expanded by Ptolemy (1st century AD), who believed that the
Indian
Ocean was enclosed on the south by land, and that the
lands of the Northern
Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the south.Ptolemy's maps, which became well-known in
Europe during the Renaissance, did not
actually depict such a continent, but they did show an Africa which
had no southern oceanic boundary (and which therefore might extend
all the way to the South Pole), and also raised the possibility
that the Indian
Ocean was entirely enclosed by land.Christian
thinkers did not totally discount the idea that there might be land
beyond the southern seas, but from St Augustine's time onwards they
denied that they could be inhabited. The impossibility of crossing
the ever more torrid space meant that descendants of Adam could not
have travelled there, and in addition, since the Gospel was
supposed to be made available to all of mankind, and could not have
been brought there, no humans could dwell in those parts (although
there were counter-myths going back to ancient time about the
'Antipodes', meaning people who lived opposite to us).

Mapping the Southern Continent

Explorers of the Age of Discovery, from the late 15th century on,
proved that Africa was almost entirely surrounded by sea, and that
the Indian Ocean was accessible from both west and east. These
discoveries reduced the area where the continent could be found;
however, many cartographers held to Aristotle's opinion.
Scientists, for example Gerardus Mercator (1569) and Alexander Dalrymple even so late as
1767 argued for its existence, with such
arguments as that there should be a large landmass in the south as a counterweight to
the known landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere. As new
lands were discovered, they were often assumed to be parts of the
hypothetical continent.

Terra Australis was depicted on the mid-16th-century Dieppe maps, where its coastline appeared just
south of the islands of the East Indies; it was often elaborately
charted, with a wealth of fictitious detail. There was much
interest in Terra Australis among Norman
and Breton merchants at that time. In 1566
and 1570, Francisque and André d'Albaigne presented Gaspard de
Coligny, Admiral of France, with projects for establishing
relations with the Austral lands. Although The Admiral gave
favourable consideration to these initiatives, they came to nought
when Coligny was killed in 1572 during the St. Bartholomew's Day
massacre.

Terra Australis occupies a large part
of the southern hemisphere.

1587.

Juan Fernandez, sailing from Chile in
1576, claimed he had discovered the Southern Continent.
Luis Váez de Torres, a Spanish or
Portuguese navigator working for the Spanish Crown, proved the
existence of a passage south of New Guinea, now known as Torres Strait.Pedro Fernandes de Queirós,
another Portuguese navigator sailing for the Spanish Crown, saw a
large island south of New Guinea in 1606, which he named La
Australia del Espiritu Santo. He represented this to the King of Spain as the Terra
Australis incognita. Isaac and Jacob Le Maire established the Australische
Compagnie (Australian Company) in 1615 to trade with Terra
Australis, which they called "Australia". British Admiralty
Hydrographer Alexander Dalrymple, whilst translating some Spanish
documents captured in the Philippines in 1752, found de Torres's
testimony. This discovery led Dalrymple to publish the
Historical Collection of the Several Voyages and Discoveries in
the South Pacific Ocean in 1770-1771, whose claim of the
existence of an unknown continent aroused widespread interest and
prompted the British government in 1769 to order James Cook in
HM Bark Endeavour to seek
out the Southern Continent to the South and West of Tahiti. The
expedition eventually led in 1770 to the British discovery and
charting of the Eastern coastline of Australia.

The cartographic depictions of the southern continent in the 16th
and early 17th centuries, as might be expected for a concept based
on such abundant conjecture and minimal data, varied wildly from
map to map; in general, the continent shrank as potential locations
were reinterpreted. At its largest, the continent included
Tierra del
Fuego, separated from South America by a small strait;
New
Guinea; and what would come to be called Australia. In Ortelius's atlas Theatrum
Orbis Terrarum, published in 1570, Terra Australis extends
north of the Tropic of Capricorn in the Pacific Ocean.

As long as
it appeared on maps at all, the continent minimally included the
unexplored lands around the South Pole, but generally much larger than the real Antarctica, spreading far north – especially in the
Pacific
Ocean.New
Zealand, first seen by the Dutch explorer
Abel Tasman in 1642, was regarded by
some as a part of the continent.

Dispelling the myth

Over the centuries the idea of Terra Australis gradually lost its
hold. In
1615, Jacob le Maire and Willem
Schouten's rounding of Cape Horn proved that Tierra del
Fuego was a relatively small island, while in 1642
Abel Tasman's circumnavigation of
New Holland proved that
Australia was not part of the mythical southern continent.
Much later, James Cook sailed around most
of New Zealand in 1770, showing that even it could not be part of a
large continent. On his second voyage he circumnavigated the globe at a very high
southern latitude, at some places even
crossing the south polar circle,
showing that any possible southern continent must lie well within
the cold polar areas. There could be no extension into regions with
a temperate climate, as had been
thought before.

Spieghel der Australische Navigatie; cited by A.
Lodewyckx, "The Name of Australia: Its Origin and Early Use",
The Victorian Historical Magazine, Vol. XIII,
No. 3, June 1929, pp. 100–191.

Andrew Cook, Introduction to An account of the discoveries
made in the South Pacifick Ocean / by Alexander Dalrymple
; first printed in 1767, reissued with a foreword by Kevin Fewster
and an essay by Andrew Cook, Potts Point (NSW), Hordern House Rare
Books for the Australian National Maritime Museum, 1996,
pp. 38–9.